


Tongues.

by Jillypups



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: F/M, Fluff, PWP, Rickeen, Smut, but Bedros Magnar can suck it, language barriers, no eels were harmed in the writing of this fic, or oysters
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-09
Updated: 2016-03-09
Packaged: 2018-05-25 16:29:21
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 16,972
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6202621
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Jillypups/pseuds/Jillypups
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><a href="http://jillypups.tumblr.com/post/140772131338/tongues-for-frozensnares-shireen-huffs-and">Picset</a><br/>This story takes place in the same universe as All the Pretty, Pretty Pieces and The Break and the Mend. </p><p>Jon Targaryen, Warden and King in the North, has accepted the fealty of Stannis Baratheon's men after the man was killed in battle. To show good faith, both to Jon and to Queen Daenerys in Kings Landing that Shireen has no interest in claiming a throne, Jon and Davos secure her betrothal to Rickon Stark on the island of Skagos. </p><p>This is how they meet. One thing among many that neither of them knew of the other was how to speak the same language. Literally.</p><p> </p><p>so this is basically horrible stupid shipper nonsense, AND NOW THAT I'VE SOLD YOU, it is also for my bb, the Stannis to my Davos, FrozenSnares.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Tongues.

I.

He has been swimming for so long that his skin has long since numbed to the salt snapping, stinging cold of the sea, and so it is with relative comfort that Rickon dives, over and over again, with a dagger in one hand and a ten foot spear in the other.  The surface of the water is all foam and spit and slosh, but down here in the depths it almost feels warmer for the still calm of it, and despite the churn and roil above there is decent visibility. Good. He will have a bloody eel on his dinner plate tonight if it is the only thing he does today, and considering how long it’s taken him to track one down, that very well might be his fate.

The serpentine beast is elusive and clever, but he has not been hunting these things for nearly his entire life for  _nothing,_  and once he’s at the shallow sea floor amongst black rock and midnight blue mussel shells, Rickon expertly inspects every hole and cranny for the telltale signs of it. Skin that looks like algae colored velvet, the wild rolling eye, the formidable jaws, and –  _There,_  he thinks with a grim, underwater grin as he puts the blade between his teeth and readies his aim with his spear.

It peers out at him with the wary confidence that Rickon cannot see it, its head the only thing visible, and his target is frustratingly small on account of its caution. There is no margin for error here. He has one chance to strike and if it is not a kill shot there is a good chance of getting injured, because there is no doubt that the thing will attack him. There is a desire to hesitate and to perfect but that is a luxury he cannot afford. Every dance starts with the first step, and since he is running out of breath and his head pounds with the instinct to suck in air even though it is water, Rickon takes aim and thrusts the spear forward.

It strikes true, impaling the fanged creature right behind the gills, and the shaft of his spear vibrates and jerks in his hand from the death throe thrashes. Quickly he yanks the eel from its den and immediately begins to kick for the surface, the last vestiges of his breath rushing from him in twin streams of bubbles from his nose. Rickon shakes his hair out of his eyes once his head breaks through the slosh of water, and he sucks in a lung-stretching gasp of air, takes the dagger from his mouth and treads water as he flexes his bicep and hauls the spear point up and out of the water. It takes a single, well-practiced slash of his blade to behead the young eel, and he lets the head sink to the surface. He’d be lying if someone asked and he denied being exhausted, and the idea of staying in this sea any longer than necessary is less than appealing.

Shaggydog is a low growl from where he waits for Rickon on the black beach, pacing like a man behind bars, but once Rickon trudges through the shallow surf to dry land the deep-belly rumble thins out to a whine.

“Have you so little faith in me?” he asks, gripping the dagger’s handle and spear shaft in one hand, shaking the saltwater from his other before he strokes the ears of his wolf. “The sea won’t claim me today, wolf,” he says with a grin.

 _But it appears something will,_  he thinks several minutes later as he strides down the beach, because there is a large carrack bobbing on the sea like a cork in wine, and he can see two rowboats battling the riptide as they make their way to shore. Even from here, Rickon can see the Baratheon banner. _So. Some_ one _, not something,_  he self-corrects as he stabs the sand with the butt of his spear and leans against it, the still-writhing body of his eel an occasional slap on his back.

“Come, Shaggydog,” he says with an amused sort of sigh, though neither man nor wolf makes any move. He knew this day was coming, but he’s not the kind of man to keep track of the passing time, and he is not prepared for this moment. He wonders if Osha knew, and if she did then he should have kept the eel’s head so he could throw it at her. Another sigh. “It is time we meet our wife,” he says, to which his wolf snarls and trots away from, and Rickon laughs because half of him wants to lope away too, to just be wild and to be free.

 

Her teeth chatter, she is shaking so hard from the freezing sea spray and bitter wind, but also from the harrowing journey from the ship to the shore, no matter how short it was. At least twice she was sure they’d tip overboard and drown, sinking like stones to the bottom of the bay. Instead Shireen stands on land that’s more or less dry, huddled under three cloaks and the comforting weight of Davos’s arm, and she burrows against the side of his body like he is her father instead of the taciturn man they burned and buried six weeks ago.

“You’ll be fine,” he says after instructing six of their men to scout down the shore in search of civilization, a cluster of houses or at the very least a single fisherman’s shack. So far to Shireen, Skagos is nothing but black beach, gray sea and rock, scrubby evergreen and occasional tan sprigs of grasses. “No matter the course of war, you are still a princess.  _And_ a Baratheon, regardless of your brief union to young Norrey. You have fury and you have grit.”

“I am nothing but a pawn, once again,” she argues, though he’s got the right of it when it comes to fury and determination. “A bargaining chip. I’m as priceless as a wagon of goods or a billy goat brought to market,” she says, hating how weak the chatter of her teeth makes her angry words sound. She has known since she was a little girl that arranged marriage is the way highborn houses align themselves, that to do so graciously is to do her house proud, but there is something about being bartered off a second time that makes her feel used up.

“It is for your safety and you know it,” he says with resignation, voice flat from having this conversation so many times. “The first was to bolster Northern support for your father, that much is true. But now this is entirely for your protection. It ensures the queen that you will not seek a throne of your own,” Davos says.

“And shows our good intentions in swearing your late father’s men to the Northern King’s armies. So not  _just_  for my protection,” she says, splitting hairs with the pout of an angry child instead of the poise of a woman two and twenty years old.

“Two birds with one stone,” Davos says with a sniff. After a moment she looks up at him, just in time to catch the wink he gives her. “And you’re at least worth  _two_  billy goats.”

Shireen huffs and gazes down the length of beach. It is a narrow strip of wet, glistening black sand between the steep cliffs of rock and reedy grass and the churn of the sea, and the dark of it makes the approaching man stand out all the more, as does his nakedness. It almost angers her, that there is a person on this wretched island who is so comfortable with the weather they can walk naked when she is miserable in countless layers. He stands out bright as an abalone shell, skin pale where it's not covered in the strange and spiraling inked designs in purple and blue and black, pale where it is not furred with the ruddy auburn of hair that covers most of his groin. He moves like an apex predator, unconcerned, surefooted even in the uneven sand. Something about him makes her shiver all over again.

“That man there,” she says, nodding her head in his direction. She decides there’s no reason to point given he’s the only other one out here with the sorry lot of them. “He’s- he isn’t wearing clothes _,_  Davos.”

“No, it would appear that he is not,” Davos says with the clearing of his throat. “Look there, though, he’s caught an eel. I reckon he’s just gone sea bathing.”

“Still, even if one goes sea bathing, one typically puts one’s clothes back on. Am I destined to be surrounded by barbarians? Northern clansmen and Skagosi savages,” she mutters, cheeks flushed hot as much from the sight before her as it is from the skin chapping wind.  

But the man makes no move to find a pile of breeches and tunic, does not seem to care at all that he’s walking about unclothed, and he does not seem to care about their presence, either. He is steady stride through the shift and sift of sand that has already made her calves ache, and he is as comfortable in his bare skin as she is with a book in her hand and a fur over her lap. If he is any representation of the folk her future lord husband has integrated amongst, then the future laid out in front of her will be  _nothing_  like she expected.

 _He is nothing like Brandon was,_ she cannot help but think, her mind a natural wander back to the only other man she’s seen in full. He was stocky to this man’s lithe, swarthy for a Northman to this man’s pale. Though his skin is pebbled from gooseflesh, though cold seawater runs down his arms and chest, he stands before them as if it were a balmy summer’s day and not an overcast wintery one. She would look away from him or snap at him to clothe himself, but this is Skagos, here, land of cannibals and mystical beasts, land of rituals and customs she is utterly unaware of. It would not do to insult the first Skagosi they meet, well-armed as he is, even though he is, as she cannot seem to ignore, naked.

“Beth ydych chi'n gwneud lawr yn y fan hon? Y doc yn gynghrair i ffwrdd,” he says, gesturing with a huge dagger to someplace behind her and Davos as he approaches them.

Shireen blinks, opens her mouth to speak, but simply stares at him instead, utterly dumbstruck at the sound of so unintelligible a language. This is not something she was prepared for, not that she was given much information with which to arm herself.

“Gallaf fynd â chi fy hun os oes angen,” he says with a shrug, though the casual air of him gutters for a moment when the decapitated eel pierced on his spear thrashes and slaps his cheek. He gives it an irritable, narrow-eyed glance.

“What? I am sorry, but,” she says before she can help herself, and she wishes she’d just let Davos speak because the draw of his attention and the almost predatory look in his eyes as he looks at her is enough to make her swallow nervously. “I- I am Princess Shireen of House Baratheon,” she says, and something about her words makes him grin.

“Shireen,” he says, pointing at her with the knife as he nods.

The way he speaks her name is bizarre, his tongue and his teeth pulling it apart before smashing it back together in the end, pronouncing it all wrong. Instead of irritating her, though, for some foolish reason it simply makes her blush like a maid, though she hasn’t been one for over a year. He is tall for his apparent youth and strong for it as well, judging by the lean carve of him, and he is wild-eyed even with so calm a demeanor as he looks at her.  _He is naked, for the Mother’s sake._

“Felly yr ydych yn fy ngwraig? Fy doe ychydig?” It is grating and harsh, guttural like he wants to chew up and swallow his words instead of say them, and she shakes her head, mystified by this language she has never heard before.                                                                     

The man grins. “Nid ydych yn siarad yr hen iaith wedyn?”

When they simply blink and stare at him, he throws his head back and laughs, and with him so thusly distracted she cannot help but let her gaze drop. Her eyes widen before she blinks and looks back up at his face, and she gasps when she sees him watching her. He glances down at himself with a chuckle and she narrows her eyes at his cheek. She’s been at war, has lived with soldiers for years now, has already been wedded and widowed. She’ll not let some naked savage get the better of her.

“Nid wyf yn gwybod y tafod cyffredin mwyach. Bydd hyn yn ddoniol.”

“We are here for Lord Rickon Stark,” Davos says, almost a question.

“Ydw. Rydw i'n adnabod,” the man says, but when she and Davos both shake their heads in lost unison, he furrows his brow, bites his lip and stares at his feet. “Poeni dim,” he says with a shake of his head and a grimace, and that’s when she realizes he is struggling to find words.

“Is me,” he says finally as he nods and looks up at Davos and then to her, words so accented she can hardly decipher them even though they are in her language, and realization dawns on her when her betrothed taps his chest with the flat of his blade. “Is me. Is Rickon Stark.”

 

There is a hasty feast prepared when House Stane receives its small party of guests, and Osha is like a tangle-haired pendulum that swings to and fro across the hall and through the keep, and every time she passes him and glares, Rickon laughs. At least she’s as caught unawares by this arrival as he is.

“You’ll be the height of disappointment to her, if you’re as lazy as this in your marriage bed,” she snaps on one trip across the inner yard, a freshly slaughtered chicken under each arm.

“Hold your tongue, woman, before you talk of things you don’t know. And besides, I caught an eel today. My bride price offered with my own two hands,” he says, holding out his hands as far as he can, roughly six feet apart thought the creature was closer to eight. “And after she’s feasted on that she can feast on something else,” he says, closing the distance between his palms to about eight inches.

“Keep dreaming, little lord,” she says with a laugh, and he grins as he follows her inside.

She is tiny like a Skagosi sprite, his wife to be, with hair that is black enough to rival his wolf’s, and it makes his fingers itch for the feel of it. There is something darkly pleasing about knowing that there is a woman who walks this realm who belongs to him, or will soon enough, though there is also the added responsibility of what that means. He is guest here with the Stanes. Driftwood Hall is no more his than the sky itself, and he’d have his own castle to keep his little woman with a face half made of stone. And then there’s the simple fact that being called upon by his cousin Jon to join two Houses is only the biggest reminder that he is a Stark. There’s weight to that, precious weight he does not want to drop.

“I will have to make my men swear secrecy now,” Lord Stane says as he tears into his roast chicken with his bare hands, steam curling up from it though he does not seem bothered by the piping hot meat. Grease glistens on the three small bones braided into his beard.

“Why is that?”

Lord Stane grunts. “Bedros Magnar of Kingshouse still observes First Night, boy. It’s why I never married my woman. Loophole,” he says with a chuckle. “Magnar may reign over Skagos but he’s dumber than horseshit.”

Rickon scowls, drinks from his cup, and watches his future wife. His tepid musings from earlier have warmed somewhat, now that he sees the curious flesh and blood of her. The way the others here shy away from her, the way they stare and whisper, only serve to make him that much more piqued. He has wolf’s blood, he is a man of the snow and the sea and now Skagos itself. Why shouldn’t his woman be one carved from the very rock?  _Yes,_ he thinks, watching the way she cuts into her fowl, though he notes that she avoids the eel.  _We could be made for each other, mayhap._ He will be damned if he lets another man touch her.

“You’ve been sitting here staring at her all night,” Osha says as she returns to her seat with a full flagon of wine.

“So?” he says. He is slouched in his seat so he can observe her from behind his lordship’s chair, she with the captivatingly odd face and the blue-sea eyes. “She is to be my wife. I can look if I want.”

“You should try talking to her,” Osha says, as if she isn’t the only bilingual person here, and it’s stupid enough to make him bark out a laugh so sharp it can be heard over the musicians and the raucous commotion of the feast.

Shireen looks up at him, double takes and stares when she catches him looking. It’s like being cracked with a whip, something he has experienced a time or two after poaching on old Magnar’s lands, but this time it is far more pleasant though no less stunning to his senses.

Candlelight flickers on her face as she regards him and the dancing glow casts shadows here and there, darkens her eyes so it looks like she wears war paint. He wonders at the strength of her, if she will fight back like these teeth-gnashing Skagosi women are so fond of doing, or if she will let him in. The thought makes him half hard, and he grins when he has to adjust himself, and though a subtle movement could keep him from tenting his breeches, he takes his time just so he can see the change of her expression at so lewd a gesture. Well does he remember her high blush when he caught her staring at his cock and balls down at the beach, and he hopes to see it again. But much to his delighted surprise, she merely glances down at his crotch with a raised eyebrow and the smallest of shrugs before turning her attention back to her plate.

Rickon is love struck.

 

_Translations:_

_Beth ydych chi'n gwneud lawr yn y fan hon? Y doc yn gynghrair i ffwrdd - What are you doing down here? The dock is a League away_

_Gallaf fynd â chi fy hun os oes angen – I can take you myself if necessary._

_Felly yr ydych yn fy ngwraig? Fy doe ychydig? – So you are to be my wife? My little doe?_

_Wneud nad ydych yn siarad y tafod hen, yna? - You do not speak the old tongue, then?_

_Nid wyf yn gwybod y tafod cyffredin mwyach. Bydd hyn yn ddoniol. – I do not know the common tongue anymore. This will be funny._

_Ydw. rydw i'n adnabod. – Yes. I know._

_Poeni dim. – Damn._

_Yr wyf yn ef. – I am him._

 

II. 

“You will grow used to it in time,” Osha says cheerfully as they walk the walls around Driftwood Hall one afternoon, the low clouds scudding by overhead so quickly that the dapples of weak sunlight are almost dizzying.

They are strolling so high above the sea that it looks almost peaceful, and though she has never been one for heights, Shireen cannot deny the strange and barren beauty of a land stripped so raw from the elements. There is no moss or deep wood here, every tree fighting the next for precious soil and root-space, every plant struggling through weeping cracks of rock, but there  _is_  life. It is vicious, clawing and ruthless; even the scraggled godswood seemed wary and sharp-toothed when Osha showed her and Davos before his departure. It is not a pretty island, nor luscious, but it  _is_  determined. Shireen finds herself empathizing with the landscape, and so she swallows her fear and leans over the high stone wall to gaze past the tumble of rock and weed and fog to the sway of ocean far down below.

“In time I may,” she murmurs, closing her eyes a brief moment before she straightens and steps back from the edge.

“Do not get wrong me,” Osha says with a grin, and Shireen ducks her head and hides her smile at the grammatical error. “It does take time here, with the language and the killing and—”

“Killing?” Shireen says, eyebrows lifted as she looks up at her companion. That is what she hoped to avoid by coming here.

“Ie,” Osha says slowly as she shrugs, folding her arms across her cloaked chest as they round a corner on the ramparts and the wind blasts them in full. “There is killing everywhere, fy Arglwyddes, as I am sure you know. And  _Rickon,_ —” she says, inhaling to start what sounds like a wild story, but Shireen stills her.

“What does that mean?” Osha is by far the most bilingual person here, and she’ll not miss a chance at a learning lesson. “What does that mean, w-whi- whin-ahg- oh damn,” she says, having already lost the sound and the lift and the drop of it.

Osha laughs. “Fy Arglwyddes,”she says, and back and forth they say it, over and over again until Shireen has more or less got it, at least to the point that Osha is no longer laughing. “It means ‘my lady,’” she says. “Apologize me if I slip back and forth. I do not speak it anymore, have not for, oh,” she says, lifting her squinting gaze to the mutable sky above, and Shireen watches as she ticks off on her fingers. “Four years? Five? Not a long time but long enough for a tongue to start to leave you.”

“You speak very well,” Shireen says with a smile. “It’s nice to have  _someone_  to talk to here,” she says wistfully, gazing down at the mink muff her hands are tucked into. Davos left three days ago, unable to stay for her wedding ceremony thanks to the raven that stole him from her.

“Look there! See them? There are your unicorns, though from so high up here you won’t see the horns,” Osha says, shaking back her hair and tying it up and out of her face with a few twists and turns, nary a ribbon in sight as she somehow knots it to itself. “But they are there to be true, sprouting right from their heads.”

She follows Osha’s suit and gazes down at the distant sea below, and she can just make out the match-thin white bodies of sea creatures as they surface the water.

“What are they?”

“Whales, my lady. Morfils, in our tongue, though these have the horn that people tell tales of.”

They are like tiny white needles of bone sewing themselves a path through blue cloth, they are so far away, and it is such a pretty sight that she sighs and smiles, lets the wind whip her as it wills, lets it take her breath. Shireen laughs when one of these unicorns crests the surface of the sea. There is the tiniest flume that sprouts like sprigs of tiny flowers, then mists into nothing. They are indeed mystical things. Pale like cream, like abalone shells, like bare naked warrior-boy skin.

“I would love to know more about this place.”

“You could speak at Rickon. He would like that. He likes  _you_ , my lady,” Osha says, leaning against the wall like there isn’t a thousand foot drop.

“He likes to shock me, I think,” Shireen murmurs. She takes one bare hand from her fur lined warmer and sets it on the stone wall. It is rough beneath her touch, reminds her of the roam of her own face. Instead of shying away from it and its chill, she digs her fingers into the granite as a reminder that it is hers now. “Even the gods can see how he walks around here half clothed all the time,” she says of the man she’s only seen here and there since her arrival.

“If  _one_  naked man offends, then I would avoid the fishing villages near the ports, especially during sunny days,” Osha laughs.

“Seven hells,” Shireen mutters, making Osha laugh all the harder, and soon she’s halfway chuckling herself before her breath is stolen away from her, and this time not by the wind or the dizzying height, but by the slinking black shadow of an approaching wolf so great she could sit astride it.

“Ah, Shaggydog,” Osha says, snapping her fingers though it pays her little mind. “Rickon’s wolf.”

 _Rickon’s wolf,_  she thinks with not a small amount of wonder, but then she remembers the great white beast of the Northern King’s, and she supposes she should not be so surprised. Still, he is  _enormous,_  and the narrow walkway only serves to magnify his bulk. Silently he pads past them, though his great head lowers as it snuffles against Shireen’s hand and skirts, and he glances at her with a green eyed wolf-look, halfhearted curiosity, the confidence of a creature that goes unchallenged.

“He reminds me of Rickon,” she says with another chuckle as she rolls her eyes. Give the wolf a spear and a dagger, and she could practically see the resemblance.

“Beth mae hi'n ei ddweud?”

Shireen whips around, the wind dragging her unbraided hair across her face as she braces herself against the wall and stares up at Rickon. At least he’s clothed  _now_ , tall and striking in furs and a dusky blue cloak that brings out the color of his eyes, and he keeps them trained her way as Osha answers his question. Shireen lifts her chin and gazes back at him as he laughs and glances at Osha, and there is a flurry of conversation between them until Osha laughs and shakes her head.

“What does he say?”

“He asked what you said, so I told him. He said he takes it as a compliment, though Shaggydog wouldn’t. And, he says his wolf seems to like you,” Osha says with the shake of her head and another laugh. “Yn mynd ymlaen, yn dod i adnabod ei,” she says to Rickon.

“Sut? Heb eiriau?” Rickon says, sliding his gaze down to the bottom of Shireen’s skirts, grins when Osha shoves him hard on the shoulder.

“Gyda eich calon, ychydig o Arglwydd,” she says.

“What is it? Wait, Osha, where are you going?” Shireen says as Osha brushes past them, stepping between their bodies with a smile and a pat to her shoulder and to his, and then suddenly it is just the two of them here, standing on top of the world.

“I should have asked her the word for ‘pig,’ since that’s what you are,” she says. “Grabbing your- walking around without any- you’re just,  _oh,_ ” she harrumphs. “We are to be married, my lord, and we can’t even speak to one another. At least my first lord husband could talk to me, not that he ever much did.” Shireen sniffs high and sharp, glances sidelong down the narrow walkway that encircles the keep like a jagged crown.

Rickon sighs, screwing up his eyes as he squints at the sky above them, and then he smiles, rakish, long-throated until he looks back down at her, and she thinks of birds of prey, his wild wolf and the still-twitching eel at the end of his spear. Until she focuses on the flicker of his eyes as he studies her face, most intensely her left cheek, and then she thinks of ugly, disappointing things, ink-stained silk or a book ruined by the rain. She wants to curl up in on herself, or perhaps lash out, but then he looks away from her and the sudden shame she feels from scrutiny dissipates.

“Skagos,” he says to her, gesturing with a sweep of his arm to the churning sea below, with the rise of it up and behind him to the towering crags and juts of gnarl-treed cliffs that climb above them.

“Yes. Oh, I mean, ie,” she says, wondering if this barbaric boy thinks she sailed here without knowing where in bloody hells she was headed. As if Davos simply grunted  _betrothal_ and she simpered and whimpered  _aye, for duty._

Shireen shrugs, unimpressed with the redundant vocabulary lesson, and is half turned to look back down at the unicorns when he stills her with a hand to her shoulder. She turns to face him, her back against the rough-hewn parapet, and he leans into her so closely she leans back, as if he is maneuvering her in a dance. Wind whips her hair as it hangs free over the wall, and her heart pounds from the proximity of him, the immeasurable distance between her and the shore below. Rickon watches her face as he reaches out for the edge of stone she is arched over, grunts with a grimace as his arm jerks.

“Skagos,” he says again, straightening to give her back her space, and with a shuddering sigh of relief she rights herself as well, is so breathless from the height that it takes her a moment to realize he is holding something out for her.

It is a stone, one he wrenched free from the wall.

“Skagos?” she says, pulling a hand from her muff and holding it out with her palm facing skyward.

Rickon beams happily, dropping the shard of rock into her hand. He nods enthusiastically, boyishness taking over the barbarian gleam in his eye. “Ie,” he says, and then he pauses, tilts his head like a serpent and smirks. “Yes,” he says, the word almost a question, and she cannot help but smile and nod.

“Ah,” he says nodding in return with a sage air of wisdom and knowing, and he reaches out again.

This time he goes for her face, and there is nowhere else to go but down to bob lifeless with the unicorns, trapped as she is between him and a wall of stone and sky. And so she stares at him, wide eyed and half-angry, half-terrified, as he holds her rough face in the cradle of his cupped hand. His thumb strokes the jagged surface, and she can almost, almost feel the pressure of his touch, can almost, almost feel the invitation of welcome, there in his touch, and the anger abates, somewhat, to see the open interest he has in her greyscale, instead of the morbid curiosity she is so used to.

“Skagos,” he murmurs, and then frowns, squints. He taps her greyscale with his thumb, uses his other hand to briefly cover the piece of rock still held in her palm. “Skagos, Fy Arglwyddes. Ydych chi'n perthyn yma,” he says with a frown and a smile.

He might be a pig, but he is an undeniably attractive one, and she cannot help but smile back.

“Skagos,” Shireen says, holding up his rock with one hand as she covers his own with the other, here against the rough scuff of her greyscale, and his eyes light up to be so snared, trapped here with her just as she’s trapped with him. “Stone.”

“Stone,” Rickon says with a wide grin, and he repeats it several times with different stresses and inflections, this simple word, as if it is some exotic spice to be savored. Shireen cannot help but laugh.

 

“Go on, my lady, is okay,” he gestures, speaking to Shireen in the common tongue though he has taught her twice as many words in the old, and now she can ask for wine and bread without Osha’s help, can pronounce the words without making Rickon roar with laughter.

They are alone together, save for Shaggydog’s in-and-out presence, in a little cove a few leagues away from Driftwood Hall, having wandered here on one of their frequent walks, pointing out various plants or animals and naming them off to one another. Shireen can ask for food in the old tongue, and now Rickon can describe to her what he hunts in the common, and right now he’s trying to urge her to swim in the sea with him, though she is having none of it.

“No, my lord, ____ not. It’s ______,” she says, hugging herself for warmth as they stand on the shore side by side. She shivers for emphasis, looking at him from inside the cowl of her cloak, and when she sees that she’s lost him she sighs, turns to face him and try again. “Cold,” she says, shivering again with exaggeration so comical he laughs.

“Cold,” he says, repeating it with his own word.

“Oer,” she says, and he nods and smiles.

“But,” he says, grinning at her as he begins to remove his cloak with one hand as he gestures to the sky above them with the other. “Not  _cold._  Is sun, see? And no tonnau,” he says, letting his cloak puddle to the sand beneath their feet.

Shireen frowns. “Tonnau?”

Rickon moves his hand up and down like the undulation of the sea. “Tonnau.”

“Oh! Waves,” she says, smiling so broadly the corner of her mouth is hindered by the stone on her face.

“Yes. Sun in sky, no  _waves_  here. Is no cold, is nice,” he says, tugging at the laces of his tunic. Rickon steps into her, hoping for one of her lovely reactions. Flustered indignation, laughing exasperation, wry amusement. They are all so bloody fun to him, and when he lifts his hands to her shoulders, rubs them briskly as if she is a fire to stoke, he has the pleasure of her slow steady inhale and the lift of her eyes to his _._ “Is gynnes, with me.”

“Hot?” she whispers, and he grins with the shake of his head. Even he knows that word, and there is a fierce, wooly sort of pride in the center of him to hear her connect that word to him.

“No. Gynnes. No hot but—”

“Warm,” she says, letting go of her breath when he releases her to remove his tunic, and the loss of touch seems to snap her out of wherever she just went. “That water is  _not_  warm,” she says. “No, my lord, I can’t.”

“You a woman of Skagos,” he says, tapping his cheek before he touches hers. “You can.”

And eventually she does. Not that day, though she does not leave when he strips naked and dives in. But she sits on a rock close to the water and watches him dive for oysters, which they name for one another in their own languages, which they eat later after he’s dressed once more. They sit by a small fire Rickon builds so she can warm herself up before they head back to Driftwood Hall, and he hands her cooked oyster meat after pulling it from a smoke-blackened skewer, licks his fingers as he watches her chew.

“Thank you,” she says, smiling at him in cloud-scattered sunlight.

“Croeso,” he grins back, though he groans with affectation when she makes him say  _you’re welcome_  in her own tongue.

She has been here for nearly two moons now, and Rickon has endeavored to do as Osha instructed, to get to know her with his heart, to try and learn hers. They get along easily enough with their limited communication, but he wishes he could know more of her, the deep dark parts that lie inside every man and woman, the secrets and the wants, the needs and the desires. He hopes she wants him. Gods know he wants  _her_ , and not just because she is destined to be his now. Now he wants the clever flicker in her gaze when they teach each other new words, wants the barb and sting of her tongue when he pushes her too far or when the servants recoil from the roughness on her face, wants the soft, sad, faraway look she gets when she thinks no one is watching.

“You like?” he says, gesturing to the button of meat she has in her hand.

Shireen nods and smiles again. “Yes, I like. Better than eel,” she murmurs, leaning into him as if she admits a crime. Rickon laughs.

“What more? What more you like?” he says, humming as he tries to think of an example. He snaps his fingers, searching for the word, but when he cannot find it he presses his palms together, opens them like his pinkies are hinged to each other. “Yes?”

“Yes,” she says with a nod. “I like books. Sitting, reading. And- and I would like to have a home, again,” she says, making him frown.

“Home?”

“Yes, a place to be safe. To _____,” and she sighs and tries again after he shakes his head, not understanding. “A place to be and to not move. A place to  _stay,_ ” she says with a tired smile, the kind that are made of thoughts of the past. “What about you? What do you like, my lord?”

He pauses to consider, to translate in his head before speaking. “Go hunt. My wolf,” he says, plucking another piece of oyster off the skewer and tossing it to Shaggydog, who lies amongst the reeds and scrub brush on the edge of the beach.

“I also like your wolf,” she smiles.

“He like you,” Rickon says, spinning the half-empty skewer between his fingers before he looks at her. “I like you also.”

“Me?” she says, breeze through grasses. There is disbelief there, and he’d like to make it go away, to blow it out of her voice like blowing dust off of those books he always finds her with. “You like  _me?_ ”

“Ie,” he nods, gazing down where he sweeps his hand across the black sand between them, brushing aside larger rocks and shells. He scoots closer to her, close enough that their shoulders touch now.

Rickon sets the skewer down on one of the rocks that make up the fire ring and turns back to regard her, dusts the sand from his fingers before he pushes her hood back and ghosts a touch down the length of her unbound hair. He smiles when her eyes slide closed, and he returns his hand to the crown of her head, lets it sift into the thick tousle of her hair, more careful than he was when he caught his first wild pony. That damned creature nearly bit clean through his leg and yet he thinks a refusal from Shireen would hurt all the more, knowing they are to be wed in another turn of the moon. Call it the foolishness of youth, but he would prefer to have a wife who likes him. Lucky for him, she does not shy away from him, only tips her head into the touch by the slightest of degrees.

“And you? You like me?”

“Yes,” she whispers. “Yes, I like you,” she says, opening her eyes to gaze at him, though when she sees how near he is now she gasps slightly, rears her head back like an island pony faced with its first bit.

Rickon opens his mouth as he brings his face ever closer to hers, determined as he is to know her now with his lips and his tongue and not just his heart, determined as he is to taste her.

“Da,” he whispers, dropping his gaze to watch her mouth, and there is a spark of arousal when she suddenly grins, because that means she wants him too, because it’s as good a sign as any that she will have him, that they will—

“And that, my lord?” she asks suddenly, taking her oyster and shoving it in his mouth, startling a grunt out of him as he sits up and away from her. “Good too? Da?”

“Ie,” he says with a laugh, shaking his head as he chews the small morsel of meat.

Her dark blue eyes glitter with amusement as she leans back with one elbow to the sand, and she watches him cough and recover himself with the languid regality of a queen, the black beach her throne, the wind in her hair a crown made by the gods themselves.  _She says she would have a home again,_  he thinks as they look at each other, all smirk and savor and smolder, push and pull and conquer. He knows through Osha-translated conversations how much she has lost and how far she has come, from one end of Westeros to the other.  _So be it_ , he thinks as an idea strikes him, and that it will be killing two birds with one stone is only half of why the idea pleases him so much.  Rickon will give her a home, and she will lounge there as she does now, and he will walk tall and proud, knowing he is the man who made it so.

 

She and Rickon have walked to their cove so many times over the past fortnight that Shireen finds it easily on her own, one gloved hand in Shaggydog’s fur as he pads along beside her. The deer path that pulls away from the dirt-and-rock road leading to Driftwood Hall is narrow and almost imperceptible to the human eye, but she remembers Rickon’s visual cues that he pointed out, the twisty old oak tree to the right and the large boulder to the left. After that it is another quarter of an hour of steep hairpin turns that lead to the tranquil little cove on this quiet side of the island.

“No peeking now, Shaggydog,” she murmurs, gazing out at the choppy sea beyond the narrow mouth of the cove, and as if he can understand her, the huge wolf turns and lopes off, back to the reeds and underbrush.

Really, it’s the best place for her to bathe in the sea, for as Rickon said before there are no waves here, not really. Just the gentle lap and list of foaming water that is gray like the sky after rain. Still, she knows it will be freezing, and so she hesitates with her arms akimbo, wondering if she truly has the gumption for such a thing.  _You are a Skagosi woman,_  she tells herself, using Rickon’s words.  _A woman made of stone,_  she thinks with a harrumph. How he thinks that is an attractive quality, she doesn’t quite understand. But she understands the look in his eye well enough, whenever he tells her. Brandon certainly never looked at her like that, even when they lay together as man and wife, and she cannot deny a certain thrill that it’s directed to  _her,_  that look.

“So be it,” she says with a nod, because she is determined to prove it to herself that she is tough enough for this place, that she can dive for mussels and oysters just like Rickon and Osha do.

She shivers and  _brrrs_  and laughs from the shock of cold wind on her bare flesh once she’s stripped herself of cloak and gown and shift, and she stands there hugging herself in her smallclothes, teeth chattering as she contemplates the idiocy of what she’s about to do.

“You are _beyond_ daft,” she tells herself as she wiggles her toes in the black sand, her skin so white against the dark beach that it looks like it glows. “An absolute fool,” she says as she shimmies out of her smallclothes, and then with a sudden exhale and grin, she takes off running towards the water.

She shrieks when she comes in contact with the water, pins and needles and the sting of salt on her feet and calves and knees, but her voice is completely lost once the water hits her between the legs, the soft slope of her bare belly, the hypersensitive skin of her nipples and breasts. Instead of screaming she just gasps, higher and higher until there is no more room for air in her lungs, and she submerges herself with the exhale, streams of bubbles rushing from her mouth and nose as she dunks below the water and kicks out to swim to the center of the cove.

Underwater, Shireen can hear the rush of the sea beyond the mouth of the cove, can feel the swirl and ebb and flow of it even here where it is so calm, and there is something bracingly  _alive,_  here. Every inch of her skin burns from the cold, every muscle in her body seems to come to life to keep her swimming, to try and get some warmth into her.

“Oh gods,” she says once she breaks the surface to come up for a breath, and it is just shallow enough for her to stand waist-deep as she sweeps her hands down her face and then up over her hair, pulling it from her face and sloughing off some of the water. “Oh gods, it’s so bloody cold,” and she laughs and laughs, because yes, it’s freezing like she knew, but it’s also wonderful, like Rickon swore it would be.

She swims as close to the mouth as she dares, near where Rickon dives for shellfish whenever they come, and though she tries over and over again, so many times the water no longer feels so cold anymore, she still can’t kick down as far as he does. It only serves to goad her on until she tires herself out, and she strokes her way back to the shallows where she stands and tries to catch her breath, gazing out at the churn and chop of sea beyond the rocky mouth, hoping she will see unicorns.

“My lady,” a man shouts, and Shireen gasps, wheeling around in the water to face the beach, to see Rickon on horseback, his long legs hanging down without saddle or stirrups. 

“Seven hells,” she says, as she sinks down to her knees in the water, effectively covering herself to the chin. “Good morning, my lord,” she says, as light and breezy as she can, as if he has wandered upon her reading in her chambers instead of standing naked as a blue jay in the sea.

“You like?” he says, clucking his tongue to his little horse so that it ambles down the rest of the path to the beach, its silvery hooves sinking deep in the black sand as it plods towards the lazy swirl of surf.

“Ie,” she says, biting her lip as she watches him dismount.

“Good,” he says, flinging the reins over the horse’s head, letting them drop to the sand as he walks to the edge of the water. He folds his arms over his chest and grins down at her. “Water is good?”

“Ie.”

He nods. “And clean. Ah, no.  _Clear_. Water is clear,” he says, letting his gaze drop. “You look good.”

When Shireen looks down and sucks in a mortified gasp at the plain sight of her, he bursts out laughing.

“Don’t look! Stop looking!” she says, cupping her breasts with her hands before she realizes how suggestive it might look, and Rickon makes no move other than to keep laughing as she folds her arms across her chest and spins around away from him.

“ _That_  is good also,” Rickon says, eyes flicking downward when she glares at him over her shoulder.

“Oh, stop it,” she says, trying to put authority into the treble of her voice, but it is no use, not with that rogue look he’s giving her, not when he so evidently finds her desirable. It’s a new and enticing thing to have a good looking man show interest no others have ever shown her. And so she swims away from him to try and hide the smile she can’t quite force off her mouth as much as to try and hide her nakedness.

She turns once she’s far away enough from him, and it is so deep she must tread water. It’s no great surprise to see him stripping down to join her, and her heart pounds at the prospect of the two of them sharing this little body of water with their clothing in useless heaps on the shore. In truth he is so casual and careless with his own nudity that it no longer shocks her, and she has gotten used to the pale sight of him. But for  _her_  to be naked with him, and for  _him_  to be walking through the shallows towards her, it makes her feel nervous and unsure. But it makes her feel wild and free, too.

He raises his eyebrows at her and grins. A _lways grins and laughter with him,_ she thinks. All that unfettered amusement and loose-limbed confidence is nothing she’s ever been and everything she’s always wished for herself.  He pulls a face at her as he moves fluidly from stride to dive, his long body disappearing underwater with a final kick of his legs. Shireen frowns when he does not resurface, treads and turns in place as she looks around for him, but then she screams when something grabs her by the ankle and gives a sharp, short tug so that she is yanked entirely underwater. She keeps her eyes open, half terrified she’ll see an eel wrapped around her ankle, but then her temper sparks when she sees the fair-skinned blur of him as he kicks up towards the surface.

“Idiot,” she says when they both come up for air, and he simply laughs when she swats his cheek for frightening her.

“Ie, my lady,” he says, flipping the hair out his eyes with the toss of his head, sending a spray of water arcing away from them.

“I thought you were an eel, and maybe you are, with the way you swim,” and it’s true that he’s far stronger at the sport than she, and already she feels the fatigue. He treads and can keep his shoulders completely out of the water, where she is bobbing with her chin half submerged.

“You are tired. You are no eel?”

“I’m fine, I’m fine,” she says hastily, feeling the heat of a blush on her cheeks even as they tread here in the cold sea, but her limbs are tired from diving, her muscles exhausted from shivering and swimming, and for a moment she sinks down, has to tilt her head all the way back to keep her nose and mouth above water.

“Here, come,” he says, dropping his hand below the water to find her wrist, and before she can protest he turns away from her, drags her arm up and over his shoulder so that she is forced to follow suit with her other arm.

Her legs stream out behind her as she clings to his back while he swims like a frog towards shallower water. She rests her chin on his shoulder and tries to ignore how it feels, having her breasts and the hard beads of her nipples pressed to his back. She can feel the flex and stretch of his muscles, the strokes of his arms making his shoulder blades move and bob beneath her, but then he stops swimming and stands, making them both rise out of the water to their ribs.

“Rickon,  _please_ ,” she squeals, loosening her arms from around his shoulders, letting herself drop like a fish back to the water as she crosses her arms over her breasts again,

“But I all-ready see you,” he says with a shrug as he turns in the water to face her, though to his credit he keeps his eyes on hers as he smiles. “And I all-ready feel you,” he says with the upward flick of his eyebrows.

“But it’s- it isn’t-” she stammers, trying to think of words that he will understand. Speaking together every day has jogged his memory with the language, but they still have barriers. Besides, she isn’t entirely sure a man like Rickon would understand  _propriety_ even if he spoke the common tongue fluently. “It isn’t  _right_ , for you to see me naked before we wed.”

“Is Skagos,” he says with a shrug. “Is no thing, this naked,” he says, pointing to himself and then to her.

“Nothing,” she corrects with a smile, pulling her hair over both of her shoulders so the drape of it provides her with a modicum of modesty.

Rickon grins. “Yes, nothing.”

Shireen laughs despite herself.

“I will no touch you, my lady, if you do no want.”

“Not,” she murmurs, lifting a hand to push his wet hair off his brow. “It’s ‘I will  _not_  touch you,’ and ‘if you do  _not_  want.’”

“And you do  _not_  want?” he murmurs, capturing her hand in his, and he watches her as he turns his head to the side and kisses her wrist.

“I didn’t say that,” she says, and the gentle ebb of water around them feels warmer somehow, the brisk, biting breezes a little balmier when he smiles and pulls her arm over his shoulder so her hand drapes over the nape of his neck.  _Wild and free,_ she thinks.

“Da,” he says, and then rolls his eyes with a smirk. “Good,” he self corrects. He runs a fingertip down her rough cheek. “What is called again?”

“What is  _it_  called. And it’s called Greyscale,” she tells him, glancing away from embarrassment.

“Greyscale. I like it,” he says, making her frown in disbelief. “You are Skagosi. Made of skagos, made for me. Like I am for you,” he says as his gaze flicks down to her mouth, and Shireen has to fight the urge to close her eyes when he drops the touch to her lower lip, pushing it down slightly. Rickon hums.

“And this?”

“M-mouth,” she stammers, trembling now from the proximity of him, cold water be damned.

“Mouth,” he murmurs, and she opens hers to let go of a breath. “And inside?” His thumb bumps up against her lower teeth before it retreats.

“Teeth. Tongue.”

“Tongue,” he says with another hum. “I like this word,” he says, and a grin slides slow and steady into place, and it feels like a trace of flame when he runs a finger from her lip to her chin and down her throat. Her eyes close as she tilts her head back, naming what he touches, feeling each part flare to life from the quest of his fingertip, and it is  _scandalous,_ what they’re doing. But she feels set loose and independent these days, less uncertain now, and they are to be wed soon besides. He said it himself that they are made for each other, and it is not as if she is a maid, and so when Rickon bends down to kiss her good cheek she does not slap him away.

“And this,” he says against her skin, kissing her cheek again, her jaw, the corner of her mouth. “What is this called?” Another press of his mouth to the corner of hers.

“Kissing,” she whispers, lifting her other hand to the back of his neck, opening her eyes to gaze at the iron grey sky above them.

“I like kissing also,” he says, voice as hushed as hers, and then she has a taste of the word and the action when he presses his mouth to hers.

Mouth. Teeth. Tongue, and Shireen likes that word too, likes the feel of it when Rickon slides his against hers, when he hums out a man’s pleasure just as she sighs into his mouth. He tastes like the sea, salt and air but much, much warmer, and when she cinches her arms tighter around his neck to keep him so tantalizingly close, it brings their chests together and it makes him groan. Rickon slides an arm around her waist, holds the back of her head with his hand like she’s precious. Words spark and bloom in her mind, words she would teach him like taste and lick and suck, words like nip, words like bite, words like—

“Rickon, wait, stop,” she gasps, breaking the kiss when she feels the gradual raise and hardening of his erection, because kissing is one thing but she can’t- they can’t do that, not here, not without a wedding. Can they?

“Stopped,” he says, resting his forehead against hers a moment. “Maddeuwch i mi.”

“There’s nothing to forgive,” she says, panting, and she is shaking uncontrollably now from the proximity of him, from the want that radiates off of him like heat from a fire, want that she herself feels like blood in her veins. But if there is nothing to forgive, then there is nothing to stop them, and she shakes as much from that possibility as she does from the Skagosi sea.

Rickon lifts his head and regards her with a frown, letting go of her to rub his hands down her upper arms. “You are cold now?”

“No, I’m not- oh, but maybe I am,” she says, blinking a few times and shaking her head to free herself from the cloudy intoxication of him, and she realizes that yes she  _is_  cold, zapped of heat and strength from the swimming.  _From the kissing_.

“Out, then,” he says with a decisive nod, taking her by the hand and leading her to the shore, and together they stride out of the sea as if they are merfolk emerging on freshly grown legs to conquer land.

Her teeth are back to chattering as she huddles under her cloak, watching him work briskly to start a fire using his flint and steel, and soon enough it starts, and Rickon makes a few trips to bring enough small kindling and bunches of dried grasses to get it crackling and snapping with merry brightness.

“Come, my lady,” he says, sitting down naked on the small pile of his clothes. He flings the cloak around himself and looks up at her. “Sit,” he says, slapping his thigh by way of invitation.

“Seven hells,” she mutters, but she is so cold, and she knows intellectually that what he is suggesting is the surest way to warm herself up, and so goes to sit on his lap with the cloak wrapped around her, but with a snatch of his hand and the flick of his wrist, he yanks it from her shoulders.

“Naked,” he says, tugging on her hand so she sits with a squeal down onto his bare thighs, cradled against his body like she is a child and he a nursemaid. 

Shireen shivers as he makes adjustments to their seating arrangement, draping her cloak over her bent knees and then up over his shoulders beneath his cloak, and then wrapping his around her, so they are in essence cocooned together, her back to his chest, her rear nested right on his groin though she is wildly relieved to note that he is no longer aroused. He presses a kiss to her greyscale, rests his cheek against hers.

“Good?” he asks, voice a hushed gust of warm breath against the side of her face.

“Ie, da,” she affirms, bowing her head and smiling at his nearness, at his warmth, at the surprising levels of gentle he seems to have inside his wildling heart. “You are warm like your wolf,” she says, thinking of that great huge beast that follows her more often these days, that sits at her feet or across her bed, leaving his heat for her when he departs before she falls asleep.

He laughs. “I  _am_  wolf, in my blood. Good hot blood.”

“And I am stone?”

“Yes,” he murmurs. “Good strong stone.”

“Hot blood too?” she asks.

“One day,” he says, dropping a kiss to her shoulder though he leaves the faintest of nips behind, and his subsequent hum is low like a growl but sweeter, pepper and honey. “I am to go today,” he says after a few moments of silence, save for the occasional snap from the fire or the whickering of his horse from where it grazes with a sort of equine contemplation at the edge of the sand where grasses grow. “For some days, I will be gone.”

Shireen frowns, turning her head towards his. “Why?”

“For you, my lady,” he says with another kiss to her bare shoulder. “For, ah, poeni dim,” he swears, and Shireen smiles, because she has learned from Osha that that means  _Damn,_ and there is something sort of lovely to her now, when he gets frustrated _._ “For wife. Wife price.”

“Bride price?” she asks, smiling to think of him traveling to some strange Skagosi market or fair to find some bauble, some token, some gift.

“Yes, bride price,” he says. “And then I come back, and make you my wife.”

She has been someone’s wife before, but there is something about the blunt way he says it, something about the unassuming way he holds her, something about the way he kisses her greyscale that makes her more than a little piqued at the idea of being  _his_  wife.

“And I will make you my husband.”

“Ie, fy Arglwyddes,” he murmurs in her ear, calling her his lady in the old tongue, and she smiles out at the sea as Rickon warms her up.

 

_Translations:_

_Ie – Yes_

_Fy Arglwyddes – My lady._

_Beth mae hi'n ei ddweud? – What is she saying?_

_Yn mynd ymlaen, yn dod i adnabod ei – go ahead, get to know her_

_Sut? Heb eiriau? – how? Without words?_

_Gyda eich calon, ychydig o Arglwydd, - with your heart, little lord_

_ydych chi'n perthyn yma – You belong here_

III.

“Will you rename yourself Magnar then?” Axton asks as they ride back from Kingshouse, bloodied and muddied and weary, cheerful and in high spirits from the spoils of Rickon’s raid.

Even Shaggy shows pleasant temperament, his tongue lolling out lazily from a muzzle still crusted with blood as he runs along side them. Axton squeezes wine from his skin into a pewter goblet he snatched from Magnar's own table before they started attacking, tosses the skin to another man before he drinks thirstily from his shining new cup.

“I will stay a Stark,” he says, gazing down at the sword cuts on his left vambrace. The lifting of his shield very nearly cost him an arm, but in the end he returns to Shireen with both of them still attached. “Moving my wife and me to Kingshouse does not change who I am.”

“So will it be King Stark in Kingshouse?” asks Dunstan on Rickon’s right, and he laughs at that.

“Pity to the world where I rule as king, even Skagos. Though I would give it a queen, if I could.” Indeed, she’s the smartest person on this island;  _she could rule with impunity_ , he thinks,  _if she so desired._

“She has bewitched you, that dark haired little thing. Skagos built you a woman made of stone and spells and now she is come for you.”                          

“Aye and what of it? Men are born to be bewitched by women.”

“Wait until you actually stick your cock in one, young pup. She will have you so befuddled you’ll be walking sideways for a week.”

The entire party of men, near fifty in all, roar with laughter, but no one laughs louder than Rickon because he knows it’s true. The evening after they swam together in the cove, he made himself come in his hand so hard he thought he would go blind, he is that consumed with wanting her. The idea of finally bedding a woman, and not just any woman but this one in particular, is very nearly enough to bring him to climax alone, and he perhaps would do something about it if he weren’t flanked by men made loyal to him, now that he has lead them to such victory.

They are swarmed by Stane’s household when they gate is lifted and they are allowed entry, and there is the buzz and hum of curious conversation as the reason for their six day disappearance is explained, one answer at a time. Only Stane and Osha knew the real reason for his departure.

“Where were you, Eben? You told me you were going fishing with Torsten.”

“That’s a lot of blood for a fishing trip, aye.”

“No, woman, we paid a visit to Kingshouse and come away its masters. Come kiss your man, for I have brought you such lovely things.”

“Did Magnar send out a call?”

“No, the young wolf did. King Stark, here.”

Laughter bubbles up as the men dismount, and Rickon looks around the narrow yard for his wife to be, and he smiles when he catches sight of her running out of the hall. He lifts his hand to her and she stops on the edge of the yard, and he can see her chest rise and fall as she catches her breath. Shireen lifts her hand in mirror image of him, runs the fingers of the other through the black of her hair as they smile at each other.

“A call to what?”

“A call to conquer, and conquer he did. You’re looking at the new Lord of Skagos.”

“Is this true, Rickon?” Lord Stane says to him as Rickon snaps back to attention, tosses his horse’s reins to a stable boy and turns to face his host. "Did you manage it?"

“Aye, Wystan, it’s true,” he grins, clapping him on his shoulder. “But have no fear, man,” he says with a laugh when the older man’s eyebrows shoot up his forehead. “Go on and marry your woman if she’ll still have you. My first act as Lord of Skagos is ending First Night, as quick as I ended Bedros’s life,” he says, striding through the throng of people and bustle of activity towards Shireen, who gasps when she sees the spatter of blood across his face, who whips a small square of cloth from inside her sleeve to dab at his face. The handkerchief is warm from her body, and he closes his eyes as she wipes it across his cheekbone and down into the scruff on his jaw.

“My lady of stone,” he says in the old tongue.

“My lord wolf,” she responds in kind, making him open his eyes to see her, to watch her mouth as she forms words in his language with an arch smirk.

“I have returned to you with your bride-price,” he murmurs, capturing her hand to kiss her wrist in the way he now knows she likes, and he watches as she smiles and gazes at where his mouth touches her skin. He cannot wait for her to teach him more of what she likes, and there he goes again, chasing wild, filthy thoughts around his own head.

“And where it be?” she asks with old tongue words, making him grin. He would be surprised at how much she can understand now, but he has not forgotten how clever she is. It’s only been six days; it would take him six hundred years to forget anything about her.

“Not here, my lady,” he says, “it is too big to move, so I will have to take you there.”

“Where?” she asks with a frown and the shake of her head, half laughing in her puzzlement.

“I have won you a castle and keep, my lady, my love,” he says. “And I have made sure you would not suffer at that man’s hands. I have won you a home, and I would wed you in it, as soon as you let me.”

She frowns a moment as she struggles with so many foreign words, and so Rickon tries again. “I make a home for you,” he says, switching tongues to speak in hers, though the necessary dumbing-down of it makes it sound like he spent a few leisurely, seaside days building her a shack made from wattle and daub instead of wresting the castle keep out from under an entire House that no longer exists, thanks to him. “I make a home for wife, yes?”

“A home? For me?” she asks with a smile, balling up the handkerchief in her hand as she slides her arms up and around his shoulders, and he loves it, seeing how comfortable she grows here in his wild world, seeing how happy he has made her. He might have yet to bed her but he feels more a man in this moment than he ever has before. “I thought you were going to got a jewelry to me.”

“No jewels,” he says, though now he wonders if that’s the sort of thing she likes. Gods know it certainly would have been easier to obtain _those_ , but then there would be Magnar, looming on the edge of Rickon’s thoughts and paranoia and marriage bed. “No jewels, a home,” he says, grinning and kissing her full on the mouth so that she gasps in surprise at so public a display.  _She can grow more comfortable yet,_ he thinks, and he is determined to make her so comfortable that she will never want to leave this island, never want to leave his arms.

 

It is Osha who tells her exactly what Rickon set out to do and did, two days later when they have moved themselves over to Kingshouse. The men he rode out and rode in with are all in the process of moving themselves here as well, packing up their modest households in seaside villages and settling within the walls of the huge castle. It takes her breath away to know that this big place has been won in her name, that this man six years her junior has already accomplished so much at such a young age, and has done it for her. She walked the halls open-mouthed with wonder and bewilderment when they first arrived, and now she sits in her new bed chambers as Osha and a serving girl gifted from House Crowl named Corowa lace her in her new wedding gown and braid her hair. She watches them in a mirror, and as they talk she picks up words here and there in the old tongue.

“They say at Deepdown that she is a _____ and has _____ him, and now there is no more ____  Night because of her.”

“No more what, Osha?” she asks in the common tongue so Corowa will not know how much she understands, and Osha grins at her through the mirror, clearly understanding her motivations.

“She says there are rumors that you are a sea witch, my lady, come from the water to put all manner of spells on him,” Osha says, and Shireen laughs.

“I’ve heard those rumors,” she says with a dismissive wave, catching Corowa’s eye and smiling sweetly. The young girl blanches and drops her gaze to the ribbons in her hands.

“ _And_  that because of it Rickon killed Bedros Magnar to keep him from claiming you.”

“ _Claiming_  me? How?” Shireen says with a shake of her head until Osha yanks on a braid to make her stop. She winces and rubs the offended spot on her scalp.

“The tradition of First Night,” Osha says lightly, twisting and coiling the braid before securing it in place. She takes a step back, admiring the half-up, half-down style she has created, with weavings of silver wire and thin birds’ bones.

“First Night?” Shireen gasps, eyes widening as she turns around to face Osha.

“Ie. Rickon did not want to take that chance with you, my lady. And so he did the only thing he could think of. He killed him.”

Shireen stares sightlessly at Rickon’s foster mother, thinks of him riding naked on his island pony as he screams her name and swings his sword, as he howls like his wolf and calls for blood. There’s a feeling in her heart and her belly, the beating of bird’s wings, a glorious mingling of fear and concern and being adored.  _I think he might adore me,_  she thinks, and how strange an experience, for her, the feeling and the knowing and the reciprocation. She remembers the blood smattered over his face and his leathers, the way the red made his teeth look even whiter when he grinned and laughed.

“He could have died,” she says, thinking of all she knows of Bedros Magnar. “House Magnar has the most men in Skagos, it could have gone  _very_  badly,” Shireen says, and suddenly she wishes the goodbye she gave him had been a bit more passionate; she did not realize he was riding to his potential death. “I thought he was going to get me jewelry,” she says, but there were an awful lot of words she did not understand, and she wonders what he said that she missed.

“I’m sure there will be many jewelry there, too, my lady,” Osha says dryly, as amused as if they spoke of her son’s japes and antics instead of him riding off to war, however little it was. “But your bride-price also includes not being taken against your will. Not a bad price, I’d say.”

“Not a bad price, indeed,” Shireen murmurs, wondering when she became so worthy to him, wondering when her heart started beating for him, to feel such worry, to feel such fear, to feel such pride.

They are wed in a wild, scruffy godswood that feels almost haunted even during midday, in front of a heart tree that is as grizzled and gnarled and wicked looking as the sea witch they claim she is. Hanging moss dangles from its branches, wafting in sharp gusts of wind that shriek down into the wood from the higher peaks around them.

Rickon stands in front of her wearing a cloak in his House colors of gray and white, in a fine black doublet and breeches, and his eyes burn when he removes the old Baratheon cloak she packed and brought here. And she realizes they burn for her, and she hopes his fire feels the fire in her, hopes he knows her blood will only get hotter with him and for him and by his side, here where she knows she belongs now, without any doubt. 

“I, Rickon of House Stark, pledge to you my love and protection,” he says in the old tongue, words she and Osha practiced together so she would understand the very moment when Rickon declared himself her husband. He steps forward, unclasping his cloak to swing it off his shoulders and onto hers. “Lady wife,” he murmurs.

“Lord husband,” she whispers in the common tongue, making him huff a laugh through his nose before cupping her face in his hands.

Shireen’s heart pounds. They have kissed countless times now, but this is the first kiss of their marriage, this is a kiss weighted in ceremony and with purpose, this is the kiss of a vow, a promise he’s already fulfilled, and so she whimpers and leans into him when their mouths meet. Despite the large audience crowding the wood, Rickon opens his mouth and deepens the kiss with the push of his tongue against hers, and that initial whimper darkens to a moan that makes one of their guests let slip a long low whistle. Shireen breaks the kiss with an embarrassed laugh, but he snares her and holds her close with a hand at the back of her neck.

“Let them look,” he whispers in the old tongue. “Let them watch me please my wife,” he says roughly, his accent slathering a rich layer of possession and craving to his words, and so she wraps her arms around his neck, opens her mouth when he kisses her again. Shireen lets them watch.

 

 

“Go on now, get out,” he barks out cheerfully, batting hands away from his body as the womenfolk pluck at the buttons of his doublet and the stays of his breeches.

They shriek and whoop with drunken laughter, and he slams the door shut once they’ve spilled out of his bedchamber into the torch-lit hallway. Rickon slides the lock into place and sighs, turning around to lean back against the thick wooden door.

“I say no bedding, and still they do,” he mutters in the common tongue, and he scrubs his face with a hand before looking up and gazing at Shireen.

She is beautiful to him, this woman of earth and rock and salt, this woman he can now call his, wearing a dress so darkly blue it could be black if the contrast of her hair didn’t disprove that. Her hair is woven and pulled back, or at least it was, because she sits on the edge of the bed, pulling it down one plait at a time, dropping pieces of silver and bone into her lap as bit by bit she transforms into the unbound woman he has fallen for. His hands ache for the chance to undo her even more, to strip her down like the wild woman he found in the sea. But he’d like to know how.

“You’re staring,” she murmurs once she’s finished, and she scoops up all of her little ornamentals from her lap, stands and deposits them on the table by the window, next to the wine and plate of goat cheese and nuts. 

“Ie, ychydig o wrach,” he says, pushing off of the door to cross the room and stand before her.

“Wrach?” she asks with a frown, her pronunciation almost, almost there. He grins. He has spoken with Osha enough to know how to translate this word for her.

“Witch,” he says, carding his fingers through her hair, from the roots to the tips, relishing in the way it makes her eyelids flit, makes her head tilt into the touch. “My little witch.”

“And you don’t mind my spells? You don’t mind my _____?” she says, and he hums when she slides a hand under his doublet and shirt. Candlelight flickers from the sconces on the wall, dances across the grey of her stone cheek and the dark of her gown, the shine of her hair and the curve of her smile.

“No, I don’t,” he says with a sigh, kissing her mouth, licking her tongue with his, tugging her lip between his teeth. He kisses her again, a firm, sound peck, speaks against her sigh. “Spell me all you want. I am yours.”

 

_Translations:_

_ychydig o wrach – little witch_

 

IV.

 He undresses her while they stand, and despite being naked with him already once before, she is still lightheaded and buzzing as his hands undo the laces of her bodice, because that was swimming, swimming and a bit of kissing, maybe, but  _this,_  this is consummation and consumption, this will be the devour of her and the flavor of him. She shivers when her dress is loosened enough to slip off her shoulders, and with two good, sharp tugs, Rickon has it down and past her hips where it blooms and blossoms and billows as it sinks to the floor to puddle around her feet.

“Ah,” he says once she stands before him in nothing but her smallclothes.

There is something darkly arousing, to be near naked when he is still fully clothed, their positions so tidily reversed. And there is something agonizingly delicious about the way he stares at her, now that he can, now that he no longer has to pretend clear water is murky. She has no fear of broken maidenheads to temper desire, has no nerves now of being nude in front of him, since she has already blazed through that taboo as well. So instead of fear and shyness Shireen simply feels like a treat, some tray of sweets he’s finally allowed to feast on, and the thought makes her ache, makes her suddenly  _very_  hungry to have a taste of  _him._

“Now you,” she says, finishing what the serving girls and female guests had started on the walk from the hall to their chamber door.

Rickon grins as she yanks his sleeves past his wrists and hands so the doublet can join her dress on the floor. His shirt, loose now without the confines of his jacket, is damp with sweat at the low of his back, and she hopes to make him sweat more as she pulls the shirt up and over his head. He walks her backwards towards the bed, hopping on one foot at times as he pulls off his boots, and by the time the backs of her legs hit the featherbed, he’s only in his breeches. When he takes her by the hips she thinks he’s about to throw her on the bed, perhaps, but suddenly he spins them so he is between the bed and her. Rickon sits, his hands kneading her flesh where he holds her in place just in front of him.

“Tell me, Shireen,” he murmurs to the valley between her breasts where he kisses her, and he lifts a more serious gaze to her eyes, his hand following, a soft, sweeping slide up her belly and over one breast where he cups and kneads her.

“Tell you what?” she says, responding in the old tongue to match her words to his, head sagging back when he takes her other breast in his mouth, his tongue a flick and flicker against her hardened nipple. Shireen gasps, a high and riding wheezing keen, digs her fingers into his hair where she makes two fists.

“Tell me what to do,” he says, quiet and matter-of-fact, and when she rights her head to look down at him with a frown of confusion, he lets her nipple slip free from the purse of his mouth to smile sheepishly up at her. Rickon shrugs. “You are my first.”

“You have never been with a woman before?” she asks, incredulous.

“No, not- not to actual- Kissing, yes,” he says, kissing her breast again. “Touching, yes,” he says, sliding his hand around and lowering it to grip her rear. “But not- not- ah,” he says, trying to find the word.

“Not fucking,” Shireen says, and she shakes her head in disbelief when the crude summation makes him laugh. “You’re unbelievable, Rickon,” and he shrugs again, either because he does not care or he does not understand.

“I will do what you tell, I will do what you say,” he murmurs against her skin, kneading her rear with one hand, cupping her breast with the other as he speaks to her other nipple between licks and kisses, and it all feels so wonderful and lovely that she would be distracted if it weren’t for the sound of his voice.

Though he can grin and laugh and shrug at her while admitting he is a virgin, there is a slight plead to his voice, an undercurrent of insecurity perhaps that reminds her of her first wedding night, when she lay trembling and afraid of pain, of being disappointing, of lacking somehow. But now she can use her experience and knowledge for the both of them. In truth, she had no idea how tonight would go, but she never expected it to go this way. Shireen bites her lip as she smiles, as it broadens until it’s a grin to match his typical irreverence.

“All right, Rickon,” she says, making him open his eyes and look up at her when she steps back from him to push down her smallclothes, and he stares down at the patch of black hair between her legs, and she almost laughs for that look of mystified wonder on his face. Certainly no one has looked at her  _there_  with such reverence, and though she is by no means some fine-honed expert at seduction, she is still the seasoned one here, and that makes her feel powerful, as if she does have enchantments, as if she really is a witch sent here to catch herself a husband, a warrior-wolf.

 

Rickon has been with plenty of women in his imagination, has closed his eyes to conjure the bounce of breasts and the mystical feel of a tight, hot, wetness, a place he’s heard Skagosi men debase as often as they set it upon a pedestal. He knows about the thrust and the spurt of seed, given how many times he’s dry-humped the kitchen girls, how good friction can feel in the palm of his hand. It isn’t as if he approached his wedding night completely clueless. But imagination and the rub of his hand, the bawdy talk of men and the wiggle of a girl made up of woolen layers, they are _nothing_ to the real thing, as he has begun to realize at this moment.

Shireen has pushed him back into the pillows, his breeches forgotten at the foot of the featherbed where they both left them, and he is staring at her, his heart hammering so hard he is sure she can hear it, as she sits astride him, just behind the hard upward jut of his cock. Rickon breathes shallowly through his mouth at the nearness of her, at the nearness of _her,_ down here where her hair is so dark and thick he cannot see what he’s been fantasizing about for so long. He slides his hands up the tops of her thighs, squeezing the soft flesh of them, half worried he still isn’t allowed all the way there. But then he lifts his hazed out gaze, finds her looking at him with a small smile, an amused curl there on her mouth.

“It’s okay, Rickon, you can touch me,” she whispers, nodding when he raises his eyebrows.

He fans out his hands on her thighs, drops his thumbs as he gets closer, and there is the bristle of hair that covers her, and then the delve into the heat he’s heard so much about, and Rickon inhales at the contact, the contrast, the way Shireen breathes in sharply when he repositions one hand so he can cup her with his fingers.

And then, _there_. The tentative reach and explore and his middle two fingers push up, push wet, push hot, and Shireen sighs, and to realize he made that noise is like realizing he can rule the world if only he try, if only she teach him.

“What are you called, there?” he asks, watching and feeling how she moves against his hand, noting how she jumps slightly when he wiggles his fingers, once, deep inside her.

“Cunt,” she whispers, eyes closed and head tilted to the side.

“I like you here, _very_ much. And here?” he asks, withdrawing his hand so he can sit up with a low grunt, and he can take her breasts into his mouth, one at a time, flicking his tongue over the pink of them.

“Nipple,” she says with a squirm when he takes one between his teeth, light as he can though there is a wild urge to bite down, it is so soft, like silk now with the slick of spit from his attention.

Rickon slides his arms around her, holds her close as he kisses her breasts and sucks them into his mouth while Shireen holds his face close with two hands in his hair. He’s trying for patience here, not quite sure if his cock will find her on its own, or if he should move them so he can take her like dogs and wolves do, but then he feels her hand squirm between their bodies, feels it wrap around his cock and tilt it forward.

“Fuck, fuck, fuck,” he breathes out in his own language, just to have her hands on him.

But then and there is a kiss of warmth, a slow drawing in before she sinks down on him with the full and utter deep hot slide of his cock inside of her. And _then_ there are no words, not in his tongue or hers, because of where he is, and as he clings to her, forehead pressed to her chest, Rickon can feel the beating of her heart, the throb of her pulse all around him, and he very nearly comes when he realizes it.

And then she moves. He hisses a sharp breath in through his teeth when her hips move, and the warmth of her belly against his and the warmth of her cunt all around him withdraws only to slide back into place. Rickon can feel the flex and firm of her thigh muscles as she digs her knees into the featherbed and rocks her hips, can feel the tight way she seems to grip him with her entire body, and his hips tell him _move_ and so he does, best he can here beneath her.

“Yes, that’s good,” she tells him in the old tongue, her breath a gust of air against the tousle of his hair, and he lifts his head to look at her, he is so eager to see what this does to her as he experiences, for the first time, what it can do to him.

She has her lower lip between her teeth, has moved her hands from his hair to his shoulders to better use him for leverage. Shireen kisses him, and this is it, this is glory, finer than battle, finer than freedom, and it builds up, up, up, warm inside her and inside him too now, slick and slather, his tongue in her mouth and his cock buried inside her. And she has let him in, and judging by those sighs of hers, if he is to believe those pretty words, she _likes_ him here.

“Yes, Rickon, very good,” she sighs against his lips and his teeth, and each word out of her mouth is another log on the fire, here, and what little control he had over the situation is being plucked away from him, and then he’s swept away by the current of her, of this, of everything. Everything. Everything.

She’s taking him in and it’s all physical at first, until his hips start bobbing up into her like a fist knocking on a door, because suddenly he calls out, low groan to full on guttural cry as everything leaves him, seed and energy and every minute of his life that he has lived up until this moment. And then she has all of him.

“Rydw i'n dy garu di,” he lets slip, again and again.

Rickon has his arms around her like straps of a shield, his palms to her shoulder blades, fingers digging into her shoulders as he holds her down while the orgasm pulses out of him, enough times that he loses count, but that’s fine because he’s already lost everything in the loveliest of ways.

 

He is lying spread eagle on the bed, head sagged to the side as he watches her clean herself up across the room. She does the job with a few squares of cloth and a basin of water, his wedding cloak draped over her shoulders for warmth, and there is a dazed sort of smile on his face, so dosed with satisfaction that Shireen almost laughs at the sight of it. He is so limp-limbed languid she’d think him drunk if she didn’t know better, and there is no small amount of pride nested in her belly to know that _she_ did that to him. There is no small amount of unspent arousal nested in her belly, also, and she is _excited_ to show him more, to show him what her own fingers found on their own several years ago.

“Come back,” he says in the old tongue, voice dipped low from exertion, from reward, from touching and kissing until Shireen could feel his seed slip from her. “Too far away,” and it is insistent and pleading, wheedle and whine from this man of muscle and sinew and grinning disregard, and it would be irritating if it wasn’t so endearing, if it wasn’t such a beg for her presence.

He begins to root and inspect and peruse her the moment she’s back at his side, flipping away the edges of the cloak to kiss her, to breathe her in from throat to belly.

“You did not make noise like me,” he says to the protruding knoll of her hip bone before he bites it, light enough that it does not hurt but firm enough to make her gasp so loud he jumps and laughs. “No noise like _that_. No noise like me.”

“No,” she admits, gazing down at where he rests his cheek on her belly like it’s a pillow, looking up at her with open earnest. “But I will in time. You will only get better,” she says, and here his eyes narrow.

“Then I will get better _now_ ,” he says, lifting his head, staring down at the hair between her legs. Indignant. Affronted. Shireen laughs.

“It will take longer for me than it did for you,” she says, switching to the common tongue, reaching down to run her fingers through his hair as he drops kisses to her belly and upper thighs between the glares he keeps casting her way. “There is more there to know.”

“So let me know it,” he says, scooting and inching down the bed, adjusting himself, pushing away the cloak, moving her legs until he is between them, her thighs draping over his shoulders. He lifts his head, gazes up at her like a sea snake cutting through the water.

“Rickon,” she breathes, because _that_ is closer than even Brandon got to her. Fingers and cock, yes, but Rickon’s face is mere _inches_ away.

“Let me see you,” he murmurs, fanning his hand over the short bush of hair that hides her from sight. “Please,” he says in her language, and it’s that word that does it, that coaxes her to spread her legs for him.

His gaze is an eager drop down to take in the center of her, and the arm he had wrapped around her leg drops away so he can slide a hand beneath her thigh, almost under her rear before he moves it to brush a touch down the length of her.

“Tell me what you call me, there,” she whispers, because two can play this teasing game of his, and he huffs a laugh, the warmth of his breath gusting against her.

“Gotsan,” he answers, and she hums and pushes her head back into the pillow when he slides his fingers inside her, and it’s nowhere near the thick of his cock but it’s tantalizing enough, considering how high he got her blood up earlier, considering it had nowhere to go but sit and simmer.

Rickon’s fingers slide out and back in, a push and pull that mimics what they did an hour earlier, his face a nuzzle before he licks, nips, sucks and then kisses her thigh.

“And that?” she asks.

“Clun,” he and with her head tossed back and her back arched, she doesn’t see but rather feels when he moves his other arm, slides that hand up her belly – “Bol” he says – to reach out and knead her breast – “Y fron,” – and she’s well warm now, moving her hips with him to try and help him, to try and help herself.

“Cusanu,” he murmurs, face so close to her cunt now that the warmth of his breathing and his words can be felt, and she digs a heel into the bed beside his ribs.

It sounds nothing like his words for anything he’s already said, though he’s not exploring anything new, and she opens her eyes to frown up at the stone ceiling.

“What does that mean?”

Rickon abandons her breast to run his hand back down the length of her, a steady smooth stroke, unicorn in the water, wolf in the sea, before he uses the fingers of this hand to push through the thatch of black hair at the apex of her thighs.

“Kissing,” he says, lowering his mouth to her.

 

He does his best, listening to her directions that switch from old to common with sighs for stops in between. Upon her insistence he turns his hand, so his fingers can curl up instead of down, and that helps, and she’s two fists to the featherbed when he bothers to glance up from what he’s so desperately trying to accomplish. Finally he is starting to make her cry out, here and there. But whenever he looks at her he is distracted from his task by the sideway slopes of her breasts and the stretch of her throat, and he can’t help but stop and watch and marvel. She moves like ribbon. She moves like smoke. She moves like—

“Don’t stop, Rickon, please,” she whimpers, and then her fingers are here, working between his mouth and that impossible little spot he loses just as soon as he finds it.  “Yes, _yes,_ right there,” she says breathlessly, and he is so enthralled with what they are doing together that he cannot tell what language she uses.

He stares transfixed, watching her hand move above his a moment before he lays a lick on top of the two fingers she’s using to whip herself up, and _that_ makes her moan, and _that_ makes his halfhearted erection harden.

“Oh gods, yes,” she pants, rocking her hips so she presses herself into his mouth.

Her fingers work while his do too, and in this way together they bring her around. He has never had a woman cry out his name before but he has it now, even though she did most of the work to get her to that point, but he will take what he can get here, will take whatever she has to give him.

 

 

The fire is dwindled and the candles snuffed out, the room dark and cold, the bed a pile of body-warmed sheets and furs when Rickon pushes inside her again.  Her back to the feathers and her nails a skate down his back, Shireen sighs to the rhythm of his buck and his thrust, though even a man with his youth and vigor is calmer at the middle of the night.

“Pretty witch,” he tells her in the old tongue. “Little stone wife,” he tells her in the new, and on and on, murmurs and whispers and wolfish grunts, and together they move like waves, _like tonnau,_ she thinks, though the thought disappears like sea-spray when he rocks into her harder and steals her breath.

“Rickon,” she breathes.

“Rydw i'n dy garu di,” he says in the old, and when she asks what, he tells her “I love you,” in the new.

“Rydw i'n dy garu di," she tries back, for the taste and the feel of it, for the truth of it, too. 

It is rolling and lazy and slow, a room full of his breathing and the Skagosi words he murmurs against her neck and her ear and her greyscale, and though she’s getting sore it still doesn’t stop her from wrapping her legs around him. It feels half a dream, she is so drowsy, so filled with sweet ache and daze and now love, that she cannot help but smile to the ceiling, to his mouth whenever his seeks hers.

“Does it feel good? Do I- am I---” he says.

“Yes, you are,” she whispers quickly, kissing his face, his jaw, the place where his neck slides to shoulder. “You feel so good.”

She cannot tell which tongue she uses when she tells him that he feels wonderful, that it is better and better. She only knows that it’s her tongue on his when he kisses her mouth and tries to steal away her soul, only knows that he understands her perfectly when she tells him to come for her. And he does, after a while, with a series of slippery pumps that makes him lift his head from her shoulder, post up on his elbows and then his palms, and in the wan and wild moon streaming in through the windows, she can see him gazing down at her.

“Did I do it right?” he asks her, still above her so that the nighttime northern island air makes the skin over her breasts and belly and arms pebble from the cold.

“Do what?” she asks, because all night he’s been worried about making her moan, making her come, and she does not want to lie if he asks about her peak. They have the rest of their lives to perfect that new trick of his.

“Fucking,” he grins.

“Oh,” Shireen says before she laughs, and she reaches up for him, tugs him back down, her wildling, her husband, her man. “No.”

“ _No_?” he says, incredulous, still out of breath, and when she brushes the hair out of his eyes, he turns his head, quick as a wolf to bite her wrist.

“No, that- that wasn’t fucking,” Shireen says, pulling him down so she can kiss him. “That was making love.”

He seems to understand that, well enough.

 

_Translations:_

_Gotsan – cunt_

_Clun – thigh_

_Bol – belly_

_Y fron – breast_

_rydw i'n dy garu di – I love you_


End file.
